NOT SO KEEN ON HALLOWEEN

A Halloween pumpkin (photo from Wikimedia)

I am writing this in Ireland, where we have gone for a break and to go to the Wexford Opera Festival, which runs from late October to early November. After this we return to London so it will be in Ireland that we experience Halloween on 31^st October, the same day that this post is published. I always think that is rather a grand word for putting something online in the hope that people will read it. Publishing, to me, involves second party approval, someone being prepared to put their money up to bring a book or article into print. Still, it is the word used by the people in charge of the blog site, so who am I to second guess them? 

Being a largely Catholic country, Ireland would not be expected to celebrate the salvation of a British parliament and a king brought up in the Protestant church – James the First of England and Scotland. He was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, a woman who was executed for her support of the Catholic church. In truth, this alone would not have caused her to be executed but her persistent plotting against her cousin Elizabeth the First and her attempts to seize the throne was easily detected and led to her execution at Fotheringay in 1587.

 

Expecting the son of an inveterate and martyred Catholic to follow her mother’s example, the Catholics of England were disappointed to find that James, brought up in the fiercely anti-Catholic Presbyterian faith to hate his mother (whom he barely knew) and to reject her religion, was a grave disappointment to them. Led by Roger Catesby, they plotted to blow up parliament with James the most prominent victim. The plot, however, was discovered and, by one of those quirks of history, was named after Guy Fawkes. In the end he was caught, taken to the Tower of London where he was tortured to reveal the names of his fellow conspirators. The feebleness of the signature on his confession shows how bad this was. Catesby, the leader of the conspiracy, meanwhile has been largely forgotten by history and the man whose job was merely to light the blue touchpaper and retire is the focus of it.

 

Even people who are not particularly interested in religion will attend bonfire night gatherings. One of the most popular of these was in Lewes, the town where my late parents lived, and which had something of an anti-Catholic reputation. In these days of ecumenical friendship, that has largely been forgotten now but the Lewes parade which culminates in a huge bonfire in which effigies of unpopular politicians and public figures join Guy Fawkes to be burnt at the stake. (I particularly remember the Argentinian leader General Galtieri at the time of the Falklands war.) In my home town of Littlehampton they have a rehearsal for this parade, which we will miss this year, staying as we are in largely Catholic Southern Ireland.

 

Instead, we are surrounded by reminders of Halloween in the form of pumpkins, witches costumes and various ghostly artefacts. These have only a tenuous connection with the Christian feast on All Hallows Eve, which precedes All Hallows – or saints – Day and All Souls Day immediately following it on 1^st and 2^nd November which are Christian feasts of remembrance. However, like many Christian celebrations, there is an overlap with paganism and it conveniently ties in Celtic festivals like Samhain, which have Irish and Scottish roots.

 

Even trick or treating, which we have imported from the USA now, has its origins in the pre-Christian habit of going from door to door singing songs and being given food in return. This often involved having the faces of the entertainers blackened up and there was a certain element of threat in the way that, if you did not welcome the uninvited visitors, they were allowed to perform mischief on your house – hence the ‘trick or treating’ habit today in which youngsters dress up in costumes and make-up in exchange for sweets and treats.

 

We seem to be gradually moving from the communality of bonfire night and parades, which once had an anti-Catholic air about them but are now just excuses for a bit of fun, to kids dressing up in costumes and marching around to peoples’ houses with a slightly threatening hint of mischief if their otherwise harmless request for sweets is ignored or denied. You can now get signs which warn trick or treaters in advance if you are unsympathetic to their demands. This seems to be missing the point. What is a threat if you are not allowed to carry it out? However, in the name of ‘harmless fun’, all points of view must be protected so anti-Halloweeners (like me) can avoid being trick or treated in their homes on 31^st October.

 

I prefer a communal parade followed by a roaring bonfire rather than tweens walking around the town where I live in costumes while I wait patiently and give them what they want. In truth, we live in an isolated cottage here and are not likely to be disturbed by trick or treaters who will have to come a long way to find us. If we have a bonfire, it will probably consist of just lighting the fire indoors and watching it burn in the grate behind a door that will be firmly locked. This will be a safe, hygienic and harmless Halloween for us in Ireland.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com 

  

PUB TALK AND PUBLIC TALK

It does not always practice what it preaches

A while ago I went on an organised visit to the Guardian newspaper. It was na interesting visit  to my favoured newspaper but what it reminded me most of all was when I worked for the civil service. Both organisations had a policy of only admitting those who had a pass to enter the buildings they used - temporary ones were made for us but had to be surrendered on departure -   and both liked to conduct their conversations in private without allowing the public to listen in.

We saw the room where the big decisions were made: what the paper would lead on and who would write for it, I presume. It would have been relatively simple to set up a video link which would have allowed people to listen in to these conversations but there was never any suggestion that this would take place or be a good idea. Unsurprisingly, the Guardian likes to make its decisions in private without any real input or interference from outside.

 

Yet the newspaper has also been a supporter of Julian Assange who seems to think that no-one should be able to have a conversation in private any more. He has made it his mission to reveal to the world what government agencies want to keep secret and he seems, to me at least, to feel that any conversation that is kept private inevitably results in the deception of the people on whose behalf the resulting decisions are made.

 

I had a brief and fairy inglorious career as a civil servant before I became a tourist guide and we were always told that decisions made in government should be shared with the public, who after all paid our salaries, but that these decisions should always be made in private. An old salt, who was my mentor and considerably more experienced in the workings of government than I ever became, said that just considering an option, which was later rejected, would soon be leaked to the media and presented as government policy by organisations with an axe to grind. Better to make the decision and present it as a fait accompli. You could always change your mind later if the brown stuff hit the fan and created a widespread stink. Roy Jenkins said that conversations about policy should always be held in private. It was effectively impossible to make a good decision if too many people were involved in it from the outset.

 

Like the government The Guardian, which is a champion of free speech, effectively does this by maintaining a very private world behind closed doors in its offices. They need to have conversations along the lines of: ‘That Polly Toynbee is over the hill nowadays. We need to get rid of her to allow a few new writers in.’ or ‘Giles Fraser believes in God and yet the vast majority of our readers are atheists. Why are we persevering with him.’  Judging from the contents of the paper, the first conversation had either never been had or quashed, while the second one resulted in Fraser, one of my favourite writers leaving. (He can now be read at unherd.com.)

 

The fact is that, if these conversations were held in public, then those taking part would censor themselves from going on the record and change their contributions accordingly. No-one would wish to be identified publicly as a Fraser or a Toynbee hater. The results would that the real conversations on the future of the paper would be transferred to somewhere private, which I will call the pub. In a pub conversation - probably with the help of alcohol - you can put the word to rights. In the cold light of day you need to take into account what other people want to achieve. So in a public conversation, you do so and adjust your sights accordingly.

 

The problem is that  keeping conversations private means that you allow and, indeed, encourage cover-ups. It is simpler to bury bad news than share them. People will not be harmed by stuff they do not know about so why not keep them ignorant - and happy. Thus incompetence, immorality and all manner of things we should know about are kept covered up along with simple decision making if everything is kept private – at least for sufficient time before they are released to the public, many of whom will have died before they know what was done in their name and at their expense to further a cause they may support but not with any or all methods available, many of which they may dislike and disapprove of.

 

How to square this circle? To keep decision making private but to expose immoral behaviour that could prove embarrassing to those authorising – or at least not forbidding – it. We will probably never do so satisfactorily but that does not mean that we should not try. The need to make decisions in private, without too many peering eyes on you, may be vital but so too is the necessity for exposure of cheats, liars and those who are prepared to break the law to further the aims of the people they are supposed to be protecting. For that we need a free press, a vital safeguard to help to uncover what might otherwise be the embarrassing secrets of government. We need, in fact, newspapers like the Guardian, who do not kowtow to a government's need and preference for secrecy but are always prefer to reveal what they are trying to keep secret.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

MIGHT VERSUS RIGHT

Prigozhin and his (probable) killer

Russian president Vladimir Putin

‘Well, that is a surprise!’ noted one sarcastic contributor to Facebook as news came through of the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash just two months after his abortive coup in Russia against Vladimir Putin. It had seemed to be that Putin might just forgive his rival who led the Wagner mercenary group and had sent his men – often to their deaths – into Ukraine.

 

How naïve that now seems in retrospect. Putin is not the sort of man to tolerate any form of independence or dissent, which he categorises as being a 'traitor’, ie someone is not totally loyal to him. It was evidently only a matter of time before Prigpzhin had to be eliminated and, if nine others died with him, who cares?  In Russia, the crew member and pilots are considered collateral damage and their deaths are ignored - or tolerated. 

 

It may seem like you are safe in the sky but you are actually very vulnerable in an aeroplane. A plane can be shot down relatively easily and your chance of survival is virtually nil. Give a man just enough time to think he is safe enough to fly and then bring down his plane and there will be no survivors and little in the way of proof that it was not an accidental event. It now seems that it was a bomb inside the plane that brought it down rather than a missile, although we will never be completely sure, such is the fog of disinformation that comes out of Russia.

 

Putin and his cronies have form in this respect. The Russian security services – surely with Putin’s at least tacit approval – sent assassins to kill Sergei Skirpal, a man they regarded as a traitor who was living in Salisbury in England. This had the element of a Keystone Cops operation and a British woman Dawn Sturgess ended up being the only (accidental) victim. Again she was collateral damage in the process, although she had nothing to do with Skirpal but, being poor, accepted as a present some perfume which was actually a deadly poison.

 

The Russians had the gall to pretend that the assassins were only going to Salisbury to look at the cathedral spire, ignoring Big Ben and the other better known sites in Britain. They were captured on camera at Heathrow but have got away with their crime and are now free (presumably) in Russia. They failed to kill their target but did send out a warning that Russia does not tolerate any form of free thinking or dissent. 

 

What angers me so much about this attitude is that Putin just laughs at the idea that they should respect Britain’s domestic laws and procedures for dealing with these matters in our quaint law-abiding country. He (or the Russian state, which is really the same thing) send their assassins anywhere in the world where there are independent thinkers - or 'traitors'.

Putin has no interest in respecting the territory of other countries or human rights, even lives. He wants to go down in history as the man who brought Ukraine back into the Russian fold and, if this means sacrificing lives, he is quite prepared for that. Thousands of Russian soldiers and Ukrainian civilians have had to be sacrificed for his vanity and ambition.

 

Sometimes we are asked who we despise most. I try not to do this – it is too easy to blame individuals when it is a collective failure that should be targeted, such as at Grenfell Tower, where the desire to lock up individuals is actually deflecting blame from what was surely a collective unwillingness to apply basic safety precautions in the name of greater economy.

 

Yet I am prepared to make an exception for Putin, whose monstrous vanity has led to so many deaths, both of Russian soldiers and Ukrainians who would prefer to head west rather than east, And who can blame them when all they have when under Russian ‘protection’ is a loss of their national identity and absorption into a country that wants to conquer them?

 

There are signs that the Russians are growing tired of Putin and tha this grip on power maybe slipping. Those who think independently are either silenced by being locked up or have given up on Russia altogether and are moving abroad (which only accentuates the problems). However, there is one thing that makes a tyrant vulnerable and that is failure.

 

If the Russians do grow tired of Putin and decide to dispose of him, I will not shed a tear. He has dealt out so much death that this is the only option for him now. He would never stay quiet as a deposed leader so any dethronement would have to end in his death. How does that old saying go? If you live by the sword, you have to die by the sword. As for us, we can only say that might does not have to triumph over right and that we should continue to support right over might.

Edwin Lerner

My other bog is diaryofatouristguide.blospot.com

DO THEY LET THE WEALTH TRICKLE DOWN?

The new £20 note with a young JMW Turner

In my main job as a tourist guide, I have noticed that people increasingly are hiring an individual tourist guide to show them around rather than joining an organised group tour. Having your own guide does (or should) offer people more flexibility to decide, often at the last minute, to alter and rearrange their plans, which they cannot do on an organised tour.

There is a difference between flexible and disorganised. Guides should be able to adapt to changing circumstances, which might mean that people altering their plans at the last minute. People often underestimate how big a city London is and just how tiring sightseeing can be, so they often trim their itineraries. Only rarely do they choose to do more.

 

When I started working as a tourist guide, I realised that I had to be something of a dictator, albeit a benevolent one. People do not in the end thank you if they miss seeing something they had paid for because you delayed too long, either waiting for a latecomer or having an extra but not strictly necessary photo stop. You often need to be ruthless to be successful.

 

I do not know what the companies charge for a private tour but I do know what the guide fees are: around £350 for a full day and £200 for a half day, more if you work in a foreign language which, much to my shame. I do not. Actually, English is so much the language of tourism that my stubborn inability to speak foreign languages does not hold me back much.

 

A colleague said that guides in other countries are expected to speak at least one other foreign language if they want to qualify. Although I had a certain sympathy with this attitude, the fact is that my monlinguisticality (a word I have evidently just invented) is not that important to my career. In short, most of my clients speak English, as I do to them.

 

They also like the individuality of having a personal guide. My partner, who also works in tourism, said that, when she started, she was told that she would probably be the only local person that most of her passengers meet. The implication was that she would have to make a god impression because her whole nationality would be judged on her sole personality.

 

There also come into contact with hotel staff, drivers and other miscellaneous people but many of these have come here to find a job and the tourist business offers the good opportunities to work casually and often for cash. While their guide might be ultra-qualified, these miscellaneous extras will speak passable English but do so as a second language.

 

The human element should never be forgotten by guides. Sometimes I think that we are blinded by our qualifications and forget that we are working with other human beings in a commercial environment. To make a living we should never forget that we need others to cough up cash to provide us with an income. Some of that wealth has to trickle down towards us.   

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

 

 

 

WHAT DO THEY DO WITH THE BODIES?

Extraction 2's hero Chris Hemsworth

I once saw a film - long forgotten now in other respects - in which the villains dispose of at the dead bodies of one their gang (possible one of their victims) by burning it in a furnace. The scene was oddly memorable mainly because there was no dialogue in it. They were just disposing of evidence that might have led the police back to them and need to leave no traces

Yet dead bodies do leave traces of their existence - and very memorable ones. Napoleon was supposed to go hunting over the battlefield the day after snoring the corpses of men he had sent to their deaths. These same corpses would then be buried communally, turned into fertiliser and the men who had fallen not given and individual graves. They had served their purpose.

Thomas Hardy's poem Drummer Hodge is about a young boy who, as his name implies, keeps soldiers older and more experienced than him in line and disciplined by his rhythmic drumming;

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest 
Uncoffined -- just as found: 
His landmark is a kopje-crest 
That breaks the veldt around: 
And foreign constellations west 
Each night above his mound. 

Young Hodge the drummer never knew -- 
Fresh from his Wessex home -- 
The meaning of the broad Karoo, 
The Bush, the dusty loam, 
And why uprose to nightly view 
Strange stars amid the gloam. 

Yet portion of that unknown plain 
Will Hodge for ever be; 
His homely Northern breast and brain 
Grow to some Southern tree, 
And strange-eyed constellations reign 
His stars eternally.

Hodge is killed in Africa, presumably in the Boer War, and lies 'uncoffined' in a grave on the veldt. He must have been about seventeen and the battle in which he fell was probably his first. I am grateful to Alan Bennett for bringing the poem to my attention in his play The History Boys.

So-called action films these days are noted for the high body count they have, with the hero offing lots of anonymous baddies in various different ways. The latest I saw was Extraction 2 on Netflix - I must admit to having watched it in an idle moment a few weeks ago. Chris Hemsworth is the professionalit who rescues a family from eastern gangsters, killing dozens as he does so. It is not a subtle film but it did pass the 'not falling asleep during it' test at least.

I always think of the aftermath. What happens to the dozens of dead bodes that are left lying about after the hero has worked his way through them? The newspapers and media, of course, would soon unearth the killer of these men so he could not expect to have a quiet life - as he is shown doing at the beginning and end - and he would be soon be expected to tell 'his story'.

We liv ein a world in which there is no - or very little chance of anonymity and being forgotten by the world - yet modern heroes are expected to go into battle unknown and unrecognised. Not to mention their victims who will always have families, loved ones and supporters who will tell anyone who listens that their Grigory was really a nice man and should not remain nameless.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

LOCKING YOURSELF IN THE GHETTO

Lynton Kwesi Johnson (Wikimedia0

I recently went to my local library to listen to Lynton Kwesi Johnson talk and read from his latest book. It was a spontaneous decision and the event was full but the library staff were nice enough to fit me in. There was a hagiographic element to the reading. Kwesi Johnson, who is black, is an elder statesman of the radical left and was being honoured. 

There was a short period for questions and the one I wanted to ask – but was not able to – was what he thought about black people who supported the Conservative party and joined the establishment. There are quite a few of these and the current government seems to be more ethnically diverse than the Labour – or any other – opposition party.

 

My view has always been that true racial and any other kind of equality will only be achieved when people from minorities do establishment type things like listening to the BBC, drinking sherry and – yes – voting Conservative. If they remain in permanent opposition, then they are effectively being locked, or locking themselves, into the ghetto. 

 

Now the ghetto can be a comforting place. People tend to agree with you and so you enjoy a feeling of solidarity being surrounded by like-minded folk. This was the sort of event that Brixton library set up with a lot of nodding heads when Kwesi Johnson attacked ‘Uncle Toms’ (although, to be fair, he did not use the term) from his race who had joined the establishment.

 

Now Kwesi Johnson is a veteran campaigner for left-wing causes and racial equality and it is probably asking too much to expect him to desert these causes. He indicated that he had already turned down honours which would have been offered to him by the government as he did not want to join the establishment and become one of these aforesaid Uncle Toms.

 

Yet recognising that racism still exists also helps to perpetrate it. A lot of black and other minority and discriminated against people (gays, women, the disabled) have little patience with this outlook and are eager to improve their lives in a way that would have been impossible in, for example, the days of immigration, as described in Andrea Levy’s book Small Island.

 

There is still some way to go, of course, and Britain’s racists are now campaigning to limit immigration to this country in a thinly disguised attack on outsiders who are alien to ‘our’ way of life. What was once overt has become covert and the children of immigrants are often amongst those keenest to raise the drawbridge to keep future immigrants out. 

 

You may not approve of this outlook but, the last time I checked, we live in a free country and they are entitled to think them. Trying to close the doors that were left open enough to allow your parents in may be despicable but it is permissible. Insisting that all people of colour campaign against discrimination probably probably has the effect of perpetrating racist attitudes.

Something of this attitude was evident in the way that someone who is black insisted on charging black visitors to an event a fraction of the price that white guests paid for their food because they had been victims of discrimination in the past. That depends on whether you want to move to a fairer future or be stuck in past attitudes. A well-meaning gesture can easily perpetuate a stereotype and effectively lock people into outdated and racist attitudes.

Edwin Lerner 

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com 

 

 

THREE SCORE YEARS AND TEN

An artist and writer's view of old age:
Swift's strudlbuggs in Gulliver's Travels

On my last birthday just over a month a month ago I turned seventy so I have had my biblical allotment of three score years and ten, which is the maximum I am supposed to have on this planet. I am extremely sceptical of the idea that there is another life to come after this one and I am not counting on anything except oblivion after my body finally dies.

 

I reckon to still have ten to twenty years before that happens. All I know for certain is that it will do so inevitably at some stage. I am not planning on cheating death and I cannot ignore it so I have written (and revised) my will to cater for eventualities. One thing the lawyer said I should do was provide an ‘expression of wishes’ so that my effects were distributed in a way that suited me. Marriage was also suggested as a way of minimising my tax liability but that does not seem like enough of a reason to plight my troth so I will probably pass on that.

A Living Will is also supposed to be a good idea. My late father said that it made a difference to what doctors decide to do. They re so worried about being sued that they will do anything to keep you alive, even if you do not want it. By the way, both he and my mother celebrated their ninetieth birthdays so I seem to come from a reasonably long-lived stock and may have another twenty years to go.

 

I hear on the news as I am writing this that alcohol related deaths are on the increase in Britain at the moment. I can well believe it. You are now allowed to take your drinks into the auditorium when you go to see a play and booze is one of the things that seems relatively cheap in comparison to everything else, the prices of which are constantly rising. For some people there is not much to do with their old age except drink. Whereas I used to put away a fair but, I now restrain myself and confine my consumption to an ice cream at the theatre.

 

My grandmother suffered from terrible forgetfulness in her later years and, although she recognised all of us, she would often get lost if let out alone in the street. My father too would repeat stories he had just told a few minutes earlier. He had been a great professor and could recite reams of poetry but would forget that he had just said the same thing as he repeated himself. He remained physically fit to the end. My mother, however, was mentally alert although physically frail as she grew older and death was probably a release for her.

 

Following their examples, I decided that I wanted my body to go before my mind. That I why I am almost relieved when I struggle to walk a long way and am overtaken by younger people whom I would have outpaced in my prime. I hate the idea of being a burden on anyone, especially my own children. Maybe they would be happy to look after me but I do not fancy having my bottom wiped or mess cleared up if I am able to do it myself.

 

Inevitably, one starts to think about death as you grow older wondering how you would like to go – in your sleep possibly without knowing anything about it, having a few seconds to realise what is happening as you succumb to a heart attack or some other fatal event, not in a lingering and painful way when you cannot do anything yourself but await the inevitable. We have no choice in the matter, but a friend who is ten years older suggested making a living will so that the agony would not be stretched out. Apparently it makes a difference.

 

On a more cheerful note, I do not have to worry too much about money and can afford to fix my house up and get rid of the rats and squirrels that are infesting it at the moment. I can also go to the theatre if I want to and went to see a play about the pop group The Temptations yesterday. It was a kind of tribute act and history lesson combined telling the story of the group in the same way that a similar play did about The Drifters recently.

 

There is evidently a market for this kind of nostalgia trip and there was a large audience of elderly and middle aged men who were reliving earlier years, usually with their wives, all of whom looked as though they had a few more inches around the waist than when the group were in their prime. This sort of play might be their only – or a rare – trip to the theatre as they relive earlier more innocent years when the songs stick in the mind more firmly than they do as you grow older. Were the songs better – or are our youthful memories stronger? 

 

I suspect it is the latter but maybe songs from the sixties were stronger than they are today. Modern people have heard of the Beatles, Rolling Stones and other groups from that era and they and their songs have lived longer in our consciousness than more modern contributions will ever do. Will people still listen to them a hundred years from now?

 

People like me will not be around to find out. Scientists are searching for the secret of eternal life and ways to cheat death. Tempting? Yes, but will they be able to renew the mind as they do the body. This is far more doubtful and any temptation to live forever is tempered by the memory of Jonathan Swift’s Struldbruggs who were created 300 years ago but are still the best argument against immortality as they went towards senility and what Shakespeare called ‘second childishness, mere oblivion’. Spare me from that, please.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com